No Place Like Home
by PoeticLife
Summary: What happened right after Angel saw Willow in the Hyperion's lobby? Right after There's No Place Like Plrtz Glrb on Angel and Gift on Buffy.


"It's Buffy."

His voice sounded distant, as if someone else had spoken the words. Angel knew that something had to have happened in Sunnydale for Willow Rosenberg to be sitting in the lobby of his hotel, looking as heartbroken as she did.

She nodded miserably. "I'm so sorry, Angel."

He didn't think he was even capable of movement, but he managed, walking over to Willow and sitting down across from her. "What happened?"

"Sit down and I'll tell you," she replied, smoothing her skirts and glancing behind him. He supposed it looked ridiculous, entering with weapons, a possibly insane physicist, Cordy in an outfit that was indescribable without the words _skimpy_ and _flashy,_ and Gunn, Wesley, and himself covered in Pylean dirt, but he couldn't care less. She paused before adding, "It's kind of a long story."

"Gunn, bring Fred up to one of the rooms," said Angel, still only half-aware that he was the one speaking. Cordy sat down next to him, and he noticed her in the way that a man drifting to sleep noticed the ceiling of his room. "You don't need to be in the middle of this."

"Buffy is the blonde Slayer chick?" Gunn checked, putting an arm around a shaky Fred's shoulder and walking upstairs with her. "The one you left Sunnydale for?"

Wesley nodded, grimacing. For the short time he'd been her Watcher, he and Buffy had mutually frustrated each other, and he sat down next to Cordy, looking guilty. She touched his arm gently as a sign of support.

They all sat facing Willow in various states of shock. Cordy looked near tears, Wesley looked like he was about to be sick, and Angel wasn't taking it in.

She finally spoke. "Apparently Dawn's blood could open a portal into a hell dimension. She wasn't human until recently. None of you ever even met her, but some people warped your memories around her to protect her. She's something called a Key. There was a god from the hell dimension, Glory, and she knew that, she was hunting Dawn. The ritual to open a portal starts with her blood, and ends with all of her in the portal, unless we wanted all the dimensions to bleed together, which, for obvious reasons, we didn't."

"Where does Buffy factor into all this?" Wesley asked quietly.

Something clicked in Angel's brain. He knew exactly what would've been going through Buffy's mind at the time. "They have the same blood, right? She jumped instead to finish the spell?"

Willow nodded, holding back tears. Her hair looked darker against her pale face, dark red, dark like Summers blood that spilled for innocents regularly -

Angel closed his eyes, trying to regain some kind of sanity that hadn't been there in the first place. When he opened them, he saw everyone there staring at him concernedly. He pointedly raised his eyebrows and everyone pretended to look elsewhere except Willow, who looked him in the eye and said, "I'm so sorry, Angel."

"Thank you for telling us in person," he responded, for lack of anything else to say.

She smiled reluctantly. "Does this really seem like a good phone conversation? I couldn't do that to you, or anyone."

He nodded. Willow sighed and said, "Is there any reason I should stick around in LA?"

"I think it'll be fine," he said, glancing at Wesley and Cordy, who nodded. "Yeah. Thank you, Willow."

She looked into his eyes for another few seconds before getting up. Her "Goodbye" and footsteps seemed unnaturally loud in the silence that completely filled the lobby of the Hyperion.

Angel glanced up at the ceiling, up at the spot they'd hung him from a few decades ago, wishing he had been there for her, because he couldn't believe it, he couldn't know that Buffy was dead until he saw her body and the sight of that might've killed whatever part of him Darla had left behind.

Cordy was speaking, but he wasn't listening. Gunn watched them all from the staircase, and Wesley was silent as he polished his glasses, and Angel couldn't feel his fingertips. Cordy's voice started getting higher and her breathing got shallower, and Angel still couldn't hear a word she said, but he stood up and she collapsed into his arms, sobbing.

He didn't hear anything she said to him, or see the hotel. Only vaguely aware of the girl crying into his shirt, he rubbed her back soothingly and tried not to think.

About a half hour later Cordy pulled away, muttering something and gesturing to her 'royal' Pylean clothes, walking away. Angel sat back down, arms crossed, eyes closed, ignoring Wesley and Gunn's explanation of where they were going.

Buffy was dead, and he was alone in a hotel lobby miles away, trying to hold it together.


End file.
